Gavin Michael Curt

Playing with Owen's bowling pins. 

Baby has a new nickname. One of the songs Tyler sings over and over is "I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee. Won't my mama be so proud of me! I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee. Ouch! It stung me." So now when Tyler talks to Baby, he can't say baby without saying bumble bee.

"Where is baby bumble bee?"
Sleeping
"What happened baby bumble bee?"
You woke him up and now he's crying.
"Hi baby bumble bee!"
Big grins. He knows his new nickname.

Baby just cannot stay sitting down in the bath tub. I seem to recall being able to use my words and have Tyler understand me by this age. So I order Gavin sternly, "Sit down on your bottom," and he turns and smiles the biggest gummy grin back. So much for tone of voice. But Tyler sees Gavin getting extra attention in the bath by my repeated requests, and Tyler tries to get in on the action. This is actually really funny to watch. As soon as Baby sits down and I give him a polite "Thank you," Tyler drops whatever toy he is playing with, looks at me mischeviously, sticks his hands on the side of the tub and stands up with a big grin on his face. He wants to get into trouble here. This is impossible to watch without cracking up at Tyler's intentional disregard for rules. Unlike Gavin, Tyler always complies with my request to sit down. But as soon as he sits, Gavin stands up. He has slipped, slid, fallen and toppled into the water (I'm hovering over to make sure he doesn't get seriously hurt) but still doesn't learn. So, bath time is short these days.

Gavin slept all night long. This was fantastic. I actually went to bed early (is 10:15 really early?) thinking it would be a long night because he wasn't himself at dinnertime: fussy and uncomfortable. When I woke up at 5 a.m. I was shocked and then the panic set in...did he cry all night and I just didn't hear him? Did I remember to raise the side of the crib or did he fall out and land on the floor? Oh lord is he still breathing? I hate this because inevitably whenever I check on my kids, I wake them up. But I had to check. I couldn't not check. Even if it meant getting ready for work with him at my feet because I've woken him up. So I quietly opened his door. This is hard, the nerves and anxiety make me want to fling the door open as fast as possible to make sure he's breathing but obviously that would wake him up. After slowly opening the door enough for me to fit my head through, I knew right away he was fine because he was breathing really loud. I mean really loud! So then I had to pause and take the moment in. And make sure I raised the side of his crib (I did). After I got ready for work without him at my feet, and even drank two cups of coffee and started a load of laundry, I was getting to the point of worry again. Amazing what the mind can do to a worried mom. I decided it was beyond time for him to wake up anyway so I opened his door not so quietly. He was still breathing really loudly, in the same exact position he was two hours prior. I went on with getting ready for work, intentionally leaving his bedroom door open so the noise wakes him up. Finally 20 minutes later, I walk by his room and see that he's up. Well, sort of. He was sitting up. His arms were holding onto the railing of the crib. His face was mashed against the railing of the crib. But his eyes were closed. He was asleep! I ran off to find the camera but this time he did hear me and woke up.

Gavin explored the outdoors this weekend and had quite a sensory experience with dirt and grass. Saturday we went to this crazy Motorcross event at Hangtown where Uncle Dana was an insider with a touring professional dirt bike rider. Uncle Dana got us into the "Pits" and front row seats (shaded, thankfully) on the race track. This was so close, it was incredibly noisy and very dirty. Gavin was so stimulated that he fell asleep as the motorcycles screamed by us over and over and over. Later, we went to Chloe Price's 5th birthday party. Gavin was dying to stretch his legs out so I put him on the grass to stand. He was acting weird and it dawned on me that he didn't much like the feeling of grass on his bare feet. He kept picking up one foot and standing on the tippy toes of the other foot, trying to stay upright on as few square inches of grass as possible. He wanted nothing to do with sitting on it. There was a bouncy house at the party and we let Gavin stand on it, with him holding on to the net and Dada holding on to him. As Tyler jumped, Gavin bounced. This was great fun for Gavin and I think it was actually really good exercise for his legs getting stronger and better balance.

Sunday was Mack's third birthday. Another party outside; more grass for Gavin. This time, he was more tolerant of sitting on it. He was wearing shorts and he didn't like the grass blades poking his thighs, so he was wiggling in funny ways. But as he wiggled, he was enjoying watching all the kids running around with paint, squirt guns, bubbles, and toys. Just when I thought things were under control enough to allow me to sit down and relax, a couple other moms notice that Gavin is trying to eat the grass. I looked over and he had a couple blades of grass just hanging out of his mouth. So much for relaxing!

Gavin's been a biting eater lately. Actually, he has never been much of an eater at all. Especially compared to Tyler. Where Tyler nursed on both sides each breastfeeding, Gavin can't take more than one side without becoming so milk-drunk that he either falls asleep or becomes delirious that he can't possibly take another second of the breast in his mouth. The biting combined with the fact that I work full time and have to use a machine to pump my milk when I'm away from him, I've been thinking it's about time to start weaning him. So I did what any e-mom does and looked on the internet for tips on weaning their babies off the breast. Tyler self-weaned at six months so I'm in completely new territory here. The first place my e-research landed me was Farmer's Almanac's Best Days Page. They've got a best day for everything from baking to mowing your lawn for retarded growth (haha) to weaning. This site would be my bible if I were a farmer and I would highly recommend it to any farmers if I knew any.

From what I've heard, the "best days" are based on the moon cycles. Full moon is not such a good time to wean a baby, new moon is. This made me look back at my milk production that has fluctuated so much since I've been pumping at work from Gavin's two-month birthday on. Looking back, it's no wonder about one week each month I would deliver bad news to Shawn, like it's the end of an era, warning him that my production was so low I must be running out of milk. This is significant because we'd need to alter our tight budget accordingly in order to factor in the $15-$20/can of formula to continue feeding Gavin. But now that I know what I know thanks to the Farmer's Almanac, it's not so significant that I needed to be so serious in my financial warnings each month. It got to this point where it seemed like as soon as I would get the thoughts of weaning Gavin by force of a lack of milk off my chest, the production would pick right back up again. Hah! Now I know it was the moon messing with me and not my mind. Phew.

So anyway, the Farmers said May 6-14 are the best days for weaning. So, beginning on May 6 I began trying to phase the breast out of Gavin's life. Long story short, it's now the night of the 13th and I'm going to have to return to that website in June to find the best days to try again. This boy is nowhere near willing to give it up. He's even been known to withhold fluids all day...bottles, sippy cups, even the expressed milk Ms. Andrea is watering (milking) down his baby cereal with, just so he can keep my production going full steam ahead. Choo-choo or as Shawn says, Moo-Moo!

Sweet little man is cutting new teeth on top. I can't believe he's nine months old and only has the two bottom teeth. But, soon he will have two on top. Funny thing is it's not the two front teeth he's getting, but the two in between the fang teeth and the front teeth. He's going to look so funny with a big gap in front!

Poor little accident-prone baby. He comes home from daycare with at least two incident reports each week. Bumping his head on the floor, falling on his nose, scraping his forehead on the carpet...he's full of bumps and bruises. I guess that is to be expected of babies learning to stand and walk. Shawn was noticing all his injuries happen and daycare and he doesn't get injured while home with us on the weekend. But, just this morning he learned how to shut the lid to the diaper genie and pushed the lid closed while his other hand was inside, and yesterday while experimenting with the kitchen drawers, he closed his baby fingers in the drawer. The difference is, they document it.